TWITTER UPDATES

Episode 31, Friday 11 September , 2009

Wise Words - Episode 31

What is the difference between the word 'continuously' and the word 'continually' or do you think they are interchangeable? Denise, NSW

I have to ‘fess up that I have always had a terrible time keeping these two words apart. The core meaning of ‘continuous’ is “uninterrupted in time, nonstop”, whereas its close cousin ‘continual’ means “very frequent, occurring regularly”. However, it seems that good dictionaries these days finally admit that the distinction between the two words continuous and continual is not at all clear-cut. In fact, the Macquarie Dictionary gives one of the descriptions for both continuous and continual as “uninterrupted in time”. This comes as a great relief. For years, I’ve had terrible trouble keeping these words separate. The only way I could remember was to think of the warning on the back of certain vehicles, like rubbish trucks, that needed to make regular stops. The words ‘stops continually’ was the caution to passing motorists. This was a handy way of distinguishing the words, until, lo and behold, some trucks suddenly appeared with the message ‘stops continuously’. Now, it seems unlikely these trucks were stopping indefinitely. So gone was my handy mnemonic! It is hardly surprising that I struggle with these words. The jargon of my own teaching profession has always confused them. For years, students have had to suffer ‘continuous assessment’. Rest assured, these students have not been assessed without interruption throughout the entire academic year! The assessment has always been ‘continual’ — from assignments dished out at regular intervals. With uses like these so entrenched, there seems little point in insisting on the fine distinction between the two.

I realise that for many the failure on the part of our dictionaries to keep these words distinct will be a disappointment. It probably seems like they’re letting the side down. After all, dictionaries are all about correct usage. However, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, they are also about general usage and people will quickly dump a dictionary that doesn’t keep up-to-date. You also have to ask the question — are these distinctions worth maintaining? There seems little point in insisting on differences in meaning that the majority of speakers no longer recognise, if they ever did. And let’s face it, as far as effective communication goes, it makes a lot of sense to abandon the distinction between continuous and continual (and others like ‘homogenous’ and ‘homogeneous’). To be efficient, language needs sounds and words that are distinct. These pairs clearly fail in this very basic requirement.

My surname is ‘Bland’ which has such dull connotations. My grandmother used to say it meant ‘suave’ when she married into the family early last century. Is this true? And how do I get the world to change it back? Colin, Vic

It is always unfortunate for those with surnames that have either shifted their meanings or indeed shifted their pronunciation to become something rather less than positive. And the debonair Colin Bland from Watsonia is dead right. ‘Bland’ when it first appeared in English did mean “smooth and suave in manner”. However, it wasn’t quite as recent as his grandmother made out. You have to go back to the 1600s to find that sense (the word comes from Latin ‘blandus’, “soft, smooth, caressing”). At that time it could also mean “mildly soothing or gentle”. Medicines and foods, for example, could be described as bland, in other words, “mild, unirritating”. From then on, it was all downhill for bland — the meanings “insipid, weak” were soon to follow.

It is occasionally possible to reclaim offensive and pejorative expressions and use them in a positive sense. Such words can become markers of group identity. Certainly, people have had success with reclaiming vocabulary like ‘wog’ and ‘gay’. In this case, however, I feel the Blands might be better off changing the pronunciation of the word. Of course, there’s always the chance it might be adopted as an in-group term by current day teenagers in the same way as ‘wicked’, ‘sick’ and ‘filthy’ have. “It’s so bland” — it might just catch on!